The industrial city and its structural changes in local plans on the example of Ruda Śląska, Poland

In the modern world, the subject of spatial planning is being increasingly raised by residents of municipalities - mainly because of the lack of a direct influence on the process of local development and aesthetics of the surroundings. Today, the primary objective of spatial planning is not only to form a proper connection between function and space but also to balance public and private interests. Constantly developed geographic spatial information systems allow not only for easy navigation around the city, but more importantly for more advanced analyses, such as the recognition of the current trends in estate development, communication systems, changes in agricultural and forest areas. The main objective of the research is to define functional-spatial links determined by social-economic needs reflected in local plans and to verify the similarities between local plans, that were drawn up in three different periods (PRL, the transition period, and in accordance with nowadays applicable laws), how the changing economic, social goals and current needs of the city affected the continuation of the adopted solutions. The study shows that despite changes in the law and abandoning the idea of industrial city, in which the landscape is dominated by blast furnaces and mine shafts, the basic trend has been maintained and local plans prepared in subsequent years form a continuum, and despite the different scales of development are closely linked. At the same time it has been shown that modern GIS tools enable verification of the continuity of spatial policy of the municipality.